Day 9

I remember a Peter Sellers’ movie where he played a detective. It might have been one of the Pink Panther, Inspector Cloiseau movies, but whatever it was there came the final big scene where everyone is gathered in the drawing room and Peter as the old detective recounts what has gone on and who said what. After relating what three people said they did Sellers gets visibly angry and emphatically asks, “Why are they lying?” The hitherto fore genial detective is enraged. He is obviously being lied to, why? Up until that point in the movie I doubt anyone realized they were lying. It’s not so subtle in today’s world. Mr. Putin, who has been accused of many ham handed killings of his opponents, has asked that if there is any evidence of Russia interfering with the U.S. elections then they should come forward. At the time of that statement people brought up the fact that revealing exactly how we knew about this interference would play into Russia’s hand because they could figure out who told us and the Russians could eliminate him. Well, the other day a guy was sitting in a high level Russian meeting. The former MI6 agent who said his source was close to a Russian deputy. Well, this guy sitting in that high level Russian meeting was close to this Russian deputy. Folks came in threw a bag over his head and dragged him out of the meeting. The next day he was found dead in the back of his car. Authorities report that he died of a heart attack. You gotta be some kind of stupid to believe that. (Why are they lying to me?)

Sunday, yesterday, Reince Priebus (who names their kid Reince anyway?) was on both Meet the Press (MTP), and Face the Nation (FTN). In both interviews he was sitting in an office that had behind him a bronze sculpture of which I could only see the back half of the animal. It was a herbivore with a little tiny tail twisting up in the air. I’m guessing it was a buffalo, a bull buffalo, which is appropriate given what he went on to say in both interviews. Both Chuck Todd and John Dickerson wanted to know about the Muslin ban that held up people at U.S. airports and prevented some people from even getting on planes to come here. Well, first off it’s not a Muslim ban said Priebus. Really? says I. Hum, the president ran on putting in place a Muslim ban, issued statements wanting a Muslim ban, asked Rudy Guiliani how to legally do a Muslim ban and you say this isn’t a Muslim ban? Go on.

According to Priebus 326 thousand people entered the U.S. on that day and only 109 were detained for further questioning. On the next interview that number dropped to 324, no accounting for what happened to those 2,000 people, but 109 were held for further questioning and wouldn’t we, the American people want that? Apparently not, because apparently that isn’t what was happening. Priebus went on to say this was narrowly focused, which if it was then why make a big splashy seemingly wide net announcement? Why have agents not say if they are holding people? Why are they lying? Then the issue came up of holding up Green Card citizens. Well, that had nothing to do with the Muslim ban, excuse me not the Muslim ban ban. Holding up Green Card citizens can be done at the discretion of Customs officers if they see or suspect anything suspicious. Really? So all of a sudden they got suspicious? Why are you lying?

Oh and all those thousands of people who showed up spontaneously at airports to protest weren’t a big deal and Trump said everything was going really well in regard to this and Priebus said that they had been working on this ban for weeks (Really? When you’ve only been in office nine days!) So how could that be? How could they have been working on it for weeks, unless of course the racist who had worked in Jeff Sessions office (the one who is buds with the racist that got sucker punched while spouting hateful racist stuff and has been shown over and over on the internet), who now works in the White House happened to offer up this ban that apparently olde Jeffy has wanted to do for years. Remember it is Sessions who gave Trump his first immigration policy position when he first started running for Pres. But why would I think a senator from Alabama might be a racist just because he has said racist things in the past, acted as an AG to deprive black people of their rights, and been denied a Federal judgeship based on his record of racism?

If you are only holding people to ask them a few more questions why are your agents denying and or being silent on holding them? Why aren’t you allowing them access to lawyers that have gone to the airports to represent them? Why are your agents saying things like We’re not holding anyone in the U.S. because they are in Customs arrivals and that isn’t technically U.S. soil. Why?

Why are there reports of people at Dulles being cuffed and taken to a secret location?

Why are you saying this ban isn’t a religious ban if you are specifically giving special status to certain religious groups?

The gaslight is indeed bright.

Let’s move onto health care. A congressman has been nominated for Health and Human Services. He’s a doctor. He’s also been involved in what looks like to anyone who can read one plus one is two that he has been involved in very shady stock trading. Namely, the fact that he has bought stock in a company then introduced legislation that would directly help that company. So based on those two facts: he’s a doctor, and he does unethical stock trades, isn’t he a perfect choice to come up with a health care plan? Not sure. Gotta think about that one.

Meanwhile a tape surfaced from the recent Republican retreat where the pols were concerned that they didn’t have anything to replace Obamacare with. It was interesting to watch one of the round table discussions where a woman from Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal said well it’s early in the process and they’ve got lots of good ideas how to do this. (Shades of Paul Ryan, “We’ve got lots of good ideas.”) To which former RNC chairman Michael Steele said that’s not the problem. The problem is they’ve had six years to come up with a replacement and they’ve got nothing.

That leaked tape seems to be the only honest thing these Republicans have said that is honest.